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Inside the Stalin Archives

Discovering the New Russia

by Jonathan Brent

“In a strongly-written, fascinating, and original book, Jonathan Brent interweaves portraits of Russians in their daily lives with an astute analysis of Joseph Stalin's legacy.” —Philip Roth

 

To most Americans, Russia remains as enigmatic today as it was during the Iron Curtain era. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the country had an opportunity to confront its tortured past. In Inside the Stalin Archives, Jonathan Brent asks why this didn’t happen. Why are the anti-Semitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion sold openly in the lobby of the State Duma? Why are archivists under surveillance and phones still tapped? Why does Stalin, a man responsible for the deaths of millions of his own people, remain popular enough to appear on boxes of chocolate sold in the Moscow airport?

Brent draws on fifteen years of access to high-level Soviet archives to answer these questions. He shows us a Russia where, in 1992, used toothbrushes were sold on the sidewalks, while now shops are filled with luxury goods and the streets are jammed with BMWs. Stalin’s specter hovers throughout, and in the book’s crescendo Brent takes us deep into the dictator’s personal papers, an unnerving prophecy of the world to come. Both cultural history and personal memoir, Inside the Stalin Archives is a deeply felt and vivid portrait of Russia in the twenty-first century.

"Brent's engaging memoir . . . reveals as much about the grim realities of post-Soviet life and bureaucracy as it does about the archives themselves. Equipped with little Russian and few contacts, but with an almost palpable sense of decency and honest intentions that illuminate his book, Brent explains for the general reader as well as for specialists how he went about his work in the new Russia." —New York Times Book Review

“In a strongly-written, fascinating, and original book, Jonathan Brent interweaves portraits of Russians in their daily lives with an astute analysis of Joseph Stalin's legacy.” —Philip Roth

“Inside the Stalin Archives is a necessary report from the Soviet netherworld of totalizing injustice that ought to have been universally known throughout the greater part of the twentieth century—when it could not have existed. Jonathan Brent’s discoveries will shake and shock and indispensably enlighten.” —Cynthia Ozick

“A fascinating, subtle, and finely written quest into the Russia of today through the dark labyrinth of history. Brent unveils not only the secrets of his journeys into Soviet Archives, but also a unique yet personal portrait of an enigmatic country and a blood-soaked century.” —Simon Sebag Montefiore

  • Hardcover, $26.00, 336 pages, 5.5 x 7.125
  • ISBN: 978-1-9777433-3-9
  • Paperback, $15.00
  • ISBN: 978-1-934633-22-9

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About the Author

Jonathan Brent is the editorial director of Yale University Press, where he founded the “Annals of Communism” series. He is the coauthor of Stalin’s Last Crime, and a frequent contributor to the New Criterion, the Observer, and the Chronicle of Higher Education. He teaches at Bard College and lives in New Haven, Connecticut.

Credit: Rita Yakusheva